Katie's Story
From somewhere in my teenage years onward, I had a recurring dream that it was my wedding day. I never knew the groom — just a faceless generic man — and my dress was always too big for me. Women fluttered around me, adjusting my hair and expressing excitement, fully oblivious to my repeated protestations that I didn’t want to do this. In the dream, no one could ever hear me say it. Or if they did, they didn’t listen.
When I would open my mouth to speak, no sound came out. In these chaotic dream nuptials, I was voiceless.
I always thought that being gay is something you must know from an early age. In most of the stories I’d heard, people expressed the pain of long, angsty teenage years spent in a closet. But, this wasn’t my experience.
I did have crushes on boys, from as early as I could remember. Long, unrequited crushes. My dating life in my teens and early 20s could best be described as “pining.” If and when I ever somehow stumbled across a boy who liked me back at the same time, I quickly retreated. Any relationship I ever made official lasted no more than a few weeks or months. Of course in mormon world, that’s when many people choose to seal the deal and put a ring on it. And since I wasn’t feeling that way about it, I assumed that was god telling me it wasn’t right and that I should break it off. And despite feeling deeply relieved every time another relationship attempt didn’t pan out, I was also devastated — and intensely self-critical. I consistently felt like a freak — felt broken, felt incapable, amid people who all seemed to be pairing up and somehow finding something I couldn’t.
My faith crisis came before my queerness, not because of it, at least not that I was aware of at the time. In fact, when I first dared to entertain the idea that I might be, you know, attracted to women, my first reaction was anger. Because it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair, after coming out as a nonbelieving apostate and enduring the wrenching pain of communicating that to family and friends, that I might have to do it again for a different reason. It wasn’t fair that, if it was true, if I wasn’t straight, and if I ever came out, that people could then dismiss my earlier decision to leave mormonism because “oh that makes sense — turns out she’s gay!”
I was the quintessential mormon girl. I lived and fucking breathed it. I thrived on Young Women’s activities, seminary, Girls’ Camp, EFY summer camps — the whole lot. I even became an EFY counselor myself for three summers in college. I adored the community, the spirituality, the music, the achievement-orientation of the whole thing. I was an awkward kid and never quite felt like I had a place in school, or even with the other kids at church. My clothes were a little weird, my humor a little different, my commentary a little too loud. Mormonism, however, gave me a mold: follow the list, exhibit the traits, stick with the plan, and you’re golden. If I fit the mormon mold, then I fit in, in the grand scheme of things. If I fit the mold, I was guaranteed everything — a husband, a bushel of children*, a lifelong purpose, a community, eternal salvation. I held all the callings, checked all the boxes, did all the things. (*turns out I really don’t like children that much and never want any of my own — the idea of actually raising kids makes me want to suffocate and/or walk into the sea, and thank god I’m now allowed to choose not to do it, the sea is tempestuous and cold)
It all broke for me in a matter of about six months, when I was 27.
A few years before that, I remember feeling uncomfortable about Prop 8. Something about it didn’t seem loving, didn’t seem kind, didn’t feel like the god I knew, but I told myself what most people tell themselves — that there must be an explanation. There must be some almighty, holy, all-seeing plan. And so, I shelved it.
I grew up in Gilbert, Arizona, and went to school in Utah. Somewhat abruptly, at age 26, I up and moved myself to Northern California. I didn’t really have a strong reason, at the time, but I felt compelled to go, and thus I went. One wonderful thing about the Bay Area is that I was able to find and connect with more forward-thinking and progressive Mormons. More people who thought critically about the doctrine, the culture, all of it. (And on that note, people who didn’t dismiss any doctrinal or structural flaw as “merely culture.”) As soon as I had the space to realize that maybe free thinking was not evil, the questions and unresolved concerns spilled out of me like a dam bursting.
As I said, it only took about six months. (I guess Satan works quickly, huh? Hashtag flaxen cords) I talked to my bishop, I talked to friends, I consulted books, I prayed, I did all the things. I made lists with what I knew on one side of the paper, and what I didn’t on the other — then reeled when the results indicated I might actually really legitimately oh my god what be on my way out. Eventually, I realized that the only thing I was looking for in all that reading and conversing and listing was a confirmation of what I already knew: that it wasn’t actually true. Because that’s something that mormonism takes from you: your ability to trust yourself. If you have a deep gut feeling but it doesn’t line up with what they say, then you are the problem. It has taken me years to repair this emotional violence (it might take an entire lifetime).
During this time I learned, for the first time in my life, that I had a goodness in me I never had to earn and never could lose. I learned, ultimately, that there are things I stood to learn that I didn't even know that I didn't know. That's what happens when your brain is not your own for a long, long time. I embraced therapy, and began to heal my mind. I embraced myself, and started healing spiritual wounds. I embraced the courage to put words to that truth when I knew there were people in my life who wouldn’t understand it. I wouldn't have understood it either until I finally saw it. And then the lies were terrifying, and naming them was painful, but ultimately brought the sweetest relief and freedom I could ever ask for.
Despite the sweetness of this process, still, it fully fucking shattered me. Over the course of those six short-yet-heavy months, I broke into something way beyond a million pieces. I exploded like a siren through a glass window, like a guttural scream at the end of a long day inside a dark car, like a holy unfettered howl on a mountaintop. And after the initial noise and pain left my body, I saw clearly for the first time in my life. To this day, I’m sure there are people still flabbergasted that I ended up where I did, given how very mormon I’d been. I know of one friend who said that, in her mind, I must never have really believed. Thinking about that still stings to this day, because it questions my integrity — and when I was in, I was all the way in. That’s why I could never skate the middle ground — when I was even a little bit out, I was all the way out. This is how I am with everything in my life. When you have me, you have me — all of me, my trust, my devotion, my support. Betrayal stings deeply because I almost never keep one just-in-case foot out the door, and I expect the same in return.
On one particular day, in that fateful summer of age 27, I went for a long run in the pouring rain. When I came across a field, I laid down in the middle of it and let the rain splash over me. (I probably concerned a few passersby). At my front door, I pulled off my soaked shoes and walked directly to the bathroom, where I peeled off layer after layer, discovering mud smudges and grassy stowaways along the way. I plopped down on the bathroom floor, amid my pile of wet clothes with my bare back pressed against the wall. My tangled, dripping hair plastered itself to my face and took up residence on my shoulders, heavy and wet.
And I felt clean.
Even before climbing into the hot shower, even with the mud smudges on my ankles and the grass stuck to my right arm and the rainwater mingling with post-running sweat in my hair, all wrapped around my head, neck, and shoulders, I felt clean. Like that cold, morning communion with a gray, waterfall sky had washed off a little weight, a little angst, a little ache. Because I’d started to finally realize that cleanliness isn't necessarily the absence of this or that sin — maybe cleanliness is just honesty.
Not long after, I took a walk outside on my lunch break. Three days before, I’d gone to a mormon temple for what I knew would be the last time. The few times before that, I felt panic when I had to slide a veil over my face while the men did not. This last time, I felt nothing. And now, on this walk, I slipped my cardigan off to reveal a tank top and bare shoulders underneath. I felt the warm September sun on my shoulders, feeling caught somewhere between giddiness, utter calm, and the rush of wondering if everyone around me could tell this was all new for me.
A bit at a time, I began to heal. Therapy played (and still plays) a big part in this. I slowly learned to take back my own goodness, mine, me, not anything I've earned from anyone. I learned to admit that I don't need to grovel at the feet of any organization that takes that innate goodness away from me and tries to sell it back to me at the price of my own conscience and intuition.
I've learned that, as a woman, I can unveil my face in the sight of any deity, lift my bowed head and make it look me directly in the eyes, while daring it to ever try to take my power, my happiness, my grace, my life, my worth, ever again from where it all belongs: in my own capable hands. I also found, in myself, a solid moral compass with a needle pulled only by my own inner voice. I realized, finally, that being driven by fear is no way to live, and that inflicting fear in other people is no way to love.
And now for the queer part… (*skips directly to Lady Gaga track*)
A year after the spiritual dam burst, now age 28, the thought crossed my mind, “How do people know they’re gay?” And then, “Why am I thinking that? This is hypothetical right? This isn’t about me. It can’t be about me. I would know, right? People usually know, don’t they?? How would I not know???”
Looking back, there were probably signs. The relationships I skittered away from. The dating that never quite added up for me. The countless times I told people, “I think I’m broken.” The way I wore overalls* every damn day of 7th grade. The way that, in 2015, that fucking abusive directive from Mormon leadership to not let children of gay people be baptized unless they denounced their parents felt nasty in a way that only comes from a deeply personal wound. (*the One True Clothing to Rule Them All, please bless amen)
I spent a full year or two curiously swiping on women on dating apps before ever meeting up with one. I wondered often if I was even allowed to call myself queer or gay or whatever, since I hadn’t had any experience, and how could I be sure?? I felt so behind. I felt behind with dating outside mormonism in general, let alone with an entirely different gender than I’d been navigating my whole life. I wondered this all, while still solely dating men but binge-watching The L Word alone in my apartment.
The first time I really fell for a woman I knew exactly what I hadn’t known all those years. I knew exactly why I’d felt broken, and why nothing ever seemed to fit for me. I knew I’d probably come out someday, beyond just the close friends in California who I’d already tentatively told. I knew I’d embrace it, I’d go all in, I’d be out and proud — because as I’ve mentioned, integrity and deep commitment to my values is fundamentally who I am. And I did, not long after, come out to my family and more close friends. I took a few years of keeping it to myself, guarding it closely — not because I was afraid or ashamed, but because I had only just recovered from coming out as Not Mormon and I deeply resented another round of that shit being heaped on me. But because I am incredibly fortunate, I was received well when I did come out. Maybe, by that point, I’d whittled my close relationships down to the type of people who I knew would always hold on to me no matter what.
Now, at age 34, I feel more like myself than I ever have in my life. A dozen tattoos, a very cliche set of nose rings, and a growing queer community. Now, I feel a force and a permission inside of me that no church pew or patriarchy ever gave me. I feel holy, and I feel whole.
And, I feel pride.
I long for more people to feel it, and for the allies I care about who are trying to fit their discomfort with homophobia into their mormon lives, to find their own ways out of the gilded cage. I see their rainbow-laden pride posts on social media, but resent the tithing dollars I know they pay to fuel an institution that actively and insidiously hurts people like me, while they get to enjoy all the benefits of the community I had to give up. I’m hurt that they can shelve the pain they cause. I hope they won’t always feel they have to balance both. I despise the cruel, coercive system that asks it of them.
I also resent the years the system stole from me. I envy queer women in their teens and early 20s who get that expansive, youthful decade to explore and learn about themselves. It’s a sweet, more carefree phase of life that I’ll never get back, and it angers me. I grieve that loss, all the time.
I realized recently that, at some point, the dream stopped. The recurring one with the bogey-man groom and the ill-fitting gown. I don’t know the last time it showed up, but it’s gone. Now when I dream about relationships and love and weddings, it’s always a woman by my side. She has a face, and soft hands, and a kind laugh that fills my sleeping heart with joy and sticks with me like holy blue warmth in my drowsy belly when I wake up. She sits with her shoulder against me and her hands on mine in a way that I swear I can almost physically feel in those swoony morning moments between sleeping and waking when I’m still sorting out who’s who and what’s what.
In this version of the dream, when I speak, people can hear me. In this dream, when I open my mouth, I have a goddamn voice. In this dream, my voice isn’t terrified and begging for a way out.
In this dream, my voice is sure.
In this dream, my voice is proud.
Thank you.. you're a great writer and great person. ...people are different not less.....iam not gay I have friends and family that. Are. I think members are self righteous and can not expect people that are different or the sinners who drink beer or smoke or even have a child be fore your marriage......I say lo e people just don't thru under the bus...
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